2004 - Saudi security forces kill two militants, including one considered al-Qaida's chief of operations on the Arabian Peninsula, in a shootout in the capital Riyadh.

2005 - A French court convicts six men in an alleged plot to send a suicide bomber into the U.S. Embassy in Paris, wrapping up a trial that shed light on the spread of Islamic radicals in Europe.

2006 - A Spanish boat recovers the bodies of 24 people believed to be African migrants floating in waters off the coast of Mauritania, hundreds of miles south of the Canary Islands.

2007 - The Islamic militant Hamas and its Fatah rivals forge a unity Palestinian government to end more than a year of political wrangling, isolation and bloodshed. Israel quickly rejects the new leadership, saying it fails to recognize the Jewish state.

2008 - China orders tourists out of Tibet's capital while troops on foot and in armored vehicles patrol the streets and enforce a strict curfew, a day after riots that a Tibetan exile group says left at least 30 protesters dead.

2009 - Thousands of anti-government protesters led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif head to Islamabad for a planned sit-in at parliament, ramping up a power struggle that risks hobbling a vital Western ally in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida.